1). Proposed Field Classification
The field of invention is primarily in CLASS 345 COMPUTER GRAPHICS PROCESSING AND SELECTIVE VISUAL DISPLAY SYSTEMS and CLASS 725 INTERACTIVE VIDEO DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS in subclasses 32 to 36, and involves CLASS 348, Television and CLASS 707, Data processing: database and file management or data structures. The potential subclasses are too numerous to mention as data processing covers many sub-disciplines.
2). Introductory Information and Related Art
Advertising is a main sources of revenue for internet companies (Sources) operating communication channels on the ubiquitous Internet. Some companies have their operation based solely on advertising income. With the constantly growing number of communication devices (e.g.: Smart TV set, a mobile device, a laptop, a PC or a tablet), the target audience is accessible over many of these communication channels. The Internet is the central communication provider of the Sources using these various communication channels and advertising is the main way the Sources make a profit. Targeting potential customers (USERs) connected with their mobile communication devices to the Internet has made inserted digital media advertising a major avenue to get public exposure. However, the usual approach of using pop-ups has been so distracting and annoying to USERs, all communication devices have internal programs to block them. Therefore, new methods to target the public has to be used to get to these USERs. These USERs can be accessed 24 hours a day on many different communication devices all connected at one information communication channel.
A) Prior Art.
The rapidly growing area of digital video presentations has produced a crowded art of somewhat ambiguous innovations. There are many patents that show the various ways of inserting advertising into computer compatible cinematography. The novel distinction of the Parent Patent is the feature of inserting advertisements or logos into the video per se. The major improvement of this CIP specification is the feature of inserting an advertisement logo into a moving object in the video per se. For example, if a football hero is shown in active motion about to obtain a winning goal, it may be possible to put an advertiser's logo on the shirt of the moving player. Such presentation may be less intrusive and more effective than cutting away to an advertisement clip to the demise of the action football scene.
In general, the prior art that does put advertisements into a User selected video places the advertisement by frame insertion instead of insertion of the advertisement into the content within the video frame. Several related patents abstracted from the crowded art and referenced above are quite different from the invention herein disclosed.
In US Patent 2011/0296457 A1 (December, 2011) titled “Converged Communication Server With Transaction Management” uses streaming to match advertising content to the interests of the viewer into a video selected by a viewer. The objective of this patent is matching several advertisements to the cost of the selected video so as to offset the cost to the viewer. This patent does not unobtrusively embed the advertisement.
US Patent 2007/0162927 A1 (Jul. 12, 2007) titled “Methods and Apparatus for Monitoring the Insertion of Local Media Content into a Program Stream” formulates tagging methods narrowing the advertisements to the interests selected by the viewer. This invention does not deal with integrating an advertiser's information into a user selected video,
US Patent 2007/0204223 A1 (Aug. 30, 2007) titled Methods Of And Systems For Personalizing And Publishing Online Content” does not deal with the insertion of advertising information into the selected video of the viewer, but analyzes the verbal metadata history of the user by permitting the user to interactively alter that metadata. By contrast, the following Specification deals with the content of the selected pictorial information and performs sophisticated parsing by analyzing individual pixels for image content and not just word content. The Specification does not require any manual personal metadata input from the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,009,965 B2 (Aug. 30, 2011) titled “Video Analyzer and Computer Program Product” describes a computer analysis to detect advertising commercials in order to cut them from the received video. The described algorithms determine scene boundaries to create clips of video. The invention does not claim any procedure for inserting a commercial into that original video presentation.
US 2010/0312608A1 (Dec. 9, 2010) titled “Content Advertisements For Video” of Shan et alia also presents a method for placement of an advertisement in a user selected video. However, said Patent is claim restricted to placing only a text message into an area that is blanked from the selected video and remains static in position. Moreover, the quiet area is determined by a Gaussian variance to determine its significance instead of absolute pixel byte content of color and placement employed in the following CIP Specification
The Inventors are aware of the work done by Inventors Hua et alia and did briefly comment on referenced Patent US 2009/0079871 A1 (Mar. 26, 2009) titled “Advertisement Insertion Points Detection For Online Video Advertising. These “Insertion Points” are locations where at least one second full video (advertisement) clip is inserted into the first video splitting that video into two clips. By contrast, the following CIP Specification and parent patent inserts the commercial message into the original video without breaking the action of that video
The unique improved feature of the following CIP Speciation is the insertion of the advertising segment into some blank object in the selected video content which then can move through each frame of the selected video content avoiding possible collision with interest areas. As mentioned in this section's introductory paragraph above, this feature also allows the advertisement to be coupled to a monochromatic pixel defined area within the frames so as to move along within such defined area-neither obfuscating the content of interest in the video nor being incompatible with the background of the video content. This feature also makes the video content and video advertising simultaneous and collateral. Such a feature of simultaneous duality contrasts sharply with most of the prior art which shows consecutive video clips at break points in a selected video.
The Inventors recognize the conflicting myriad of patents which employ common domain computer algorithms but they are also immersed in the technology and therefore recognize the uniqueness of their synergistic utilization of these algorithm tools which are known to those in the art. In the Parent Patent and following CIP Specification description, the primary commercially attractive method permits the insertion of an advertisers statement or logo into a video selected by a viewer in a place in the selected video which does not contain information of interest; i.e.,—action. As detailed in the following Specification and Claims, this is accomplished by a pixel analysis (or parsing) to find sequences of pixel words that do not change significantly from video frame to frame. It is a parsing within each frame of the video to find the location spot. The plethora of existing patents reviewed does not accomplish the same results the applicants have achieved in their shop with the Parent Patent and following CIP Specification.